Celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal has promised to ‘sex up’ cottage pies at Royal Berkshire Hospital to encourage elderly patients to eat more.

The experimental cook, who creates weird but wonderful creations in the kitchen, has teamed up with the hospital and researchers at The University of Reading to make food tasty for older people who may have lost some of their tastebuds.

Mr Blumenthal – who could call himself doctor after receiving an honorary doctorate from the university in 2006 – will be working with Dr Lisa Methven, food scientist at the uni, and Margot Gosney, professor of elderly medicine at the hospital, to use the umami food sensation that is contained in a number of natural ingredients and is tasteful even to older people.

Sixty per cent of elderly patients come into hospital malnourished and the percentage is even higher when they leave. The team working on the project in Reading believe it is because food can be tasteless and bland for older people.

Mr Blumenthal said: “We are still working on how we are going to do this and we will be stripping the food back to see where we can change things to make them more tasty but essentially, a cottage pie will still be a cottage pie. Elderly people will just be able to taste it more.

“We have started by focusing on umami which is commonly used in the Japanese diet and is contained in foods like tomatoes and shitake mushrooms and is known to have a stronger taste sensation than the well-known western tastes like sweet, sour and bitter.

“People in hospital should be looking forward to meal times as something enjoyable in their day and we hope to rejuvenate the dining experience and improve the flavour in the mouth.”

Prof Gosney, who has been involved in the project since it started 12 months ago, added: “When someone comes into hospital they are particularly vulnerable because of infection or trauma or surgery and we need to make sure they get the nourishment they need to recover. We want to improve the lot of older people.

“The menus essentially will not change, it will still contain the favourite dishes of cottage pies, fish and chips and roast dinner and things like that but we hope to make these dishes more tasty by adding something to them and hope that older people will therefore eat more and be healthier.”

Dr Methven has been working on how to extract compounds from umami-rich foods and will be using a tasting panel of elderly patients to taste the foods. She said: “As people get older their taste and odour thresholds increase so they may need more flavour to enjoy food and the last thing we want is for them to add more salt to it.

“Using high levels of umami, we hope, will reduce periods of illness and increase recovery time from surgery.”

The initial tests will be focusing on minced meat.

The new recipes are expected to be rolled out in the hospital over the next few months.

Site navigation

• Home
• News
• Business
• Sport
• Entertainment
• Lifestyle
• Jobs
• Property
• Motoring
• Classifieds

• A A